Bob Uecker in heaven....

This is going to be about baseball, but first I have to set the scene for you. It’s kinda important.

I don’t think heaven exists. Or hell for that matter. I require proof for such claims, and thus far at least nobody has provided any. Per the religion I was born into, I’m supposed to take the heaven/hell thing on faith because it was written down in an old book by men who also took it on faith…..because it was passed down orally by somebody who may have been stoned off his ass on peyote for all anybody knows. All religions have the same sort of “book”, with the same sort of mysterious origins and claims of a wonderful or not so wonderful after-life depending on if you followed the rules, which differ depending on the book. Such rules are open to all kinds of interpretations, which is what led to things like the Crusades and suicide bombers and evangelicals who hate gays and NFL kickers thinking Jesus decided to fuck the other team because the kicker blessed himself.

I can only speak for myself here, but the most outwardly “religious” lay people I have come across are always the most vile. They are the sort who dress up for Sunday services, respond and sing the loudest, and then tell you to fuck off in the parking lot. There are exceptions of course. Well, actually, no there isn’t. Outwardly claiming some sort of spiritual omnipotence is what people who allow their dogs to shit in your front yard do. It implies a superiority, and it drives me crazy.

The “official” religious people I’ve dealt with (in my case priests and nuns) have been a revolving door of the genuinely good and the terrifyingly sociopathic, but I remember one group just as much as I remember the other, which seems fair enough. I do admire those who devote their lives to whatever God they believe in, as long as they do so without judgement and keep their hands off little kids.

So there’s all that. Now on to the matter at hand. Which is baseball.